Messy-Real-Life: Filled with Grace and Mercy.

Does anyone else just lay in bed before getting up and think about how picture-perfect their day will be? I do this all the time… It’s like a movie in my mind before I get up. Every day… I wake up, have perfect hair, don’t struggle with finding an outfit that makes me feel gorgeous, never encounter a pimple on my face, don’t lose my keys or my phone… I always remember every single project that I’m working on… I always have the time to finish my to-do list. And when adversity hits me… I handle it like a champ! No big deal. My Fake-Life looks great in my morning dreams.
 

Goodbye, Fake-Beautiful-Life. Hello, Messy-Real-Life!

Today… Today is just an example:

I woke up super early (like 4:45am early). I was fiercely determined: I was going to get stuff done today. Beast-Mode: Activated.

Wrong.

• Videos wouldn’t upload to Prezi at all.
• They wouldn’t upload to YouTube properly.
• Three hours later, I have two videos. Cannot use the one I really wanted to use.
• I showered in record time! (Due to the fact that I forgot to rinse out shampoo… And conditioner.)
• Spilled ice and water all over the kitchen.
• Burned breakfast/snack/food.
• Stumbled and spilled coffee on my way out the door.

But my day could only get better. It was only 9:15. It had to get better!

I run through the pouring rain so that I wouldn’t be any later to my meeting. Let me take a minute to let you know that when I say “run” I really mean this weird, awkward, hobble in heels while carrying a heavy bag and laptop and having no idea where I really needed to be going. When I finally reach the door, I walk through it and encounter this man. Whew! He’ll be able to tell me where I need to go… “I’m here for a meeting with Patrice! …?” Blank stare. Okay… Wrong name? Pam? No, I’m right, Patrice. Wrong day? What day is today? Wrong time? Why is he still staring at me?

Finally, I made it to the meeting with Patrice. I sat there with an awkward smile, nodding at the directions that were given, giving some of an opinion, and just dreaming of warm, dry clothes.

But my day was only going to get better. It was only 11:15. It had to get better!

I stopped for coffee at Starbucks, because I felt I deserved a non-fat, no-whip Salted Caramel Mocha.

I got it for free, because I waited so patiently for it. Finally, a break. My day is getting better! Thank you, Lord!

Bump! Splish. Splash. Hot coffee on legs. Drips on shirt.

Spoke too soon…

Don’t worry though: I have a shirt in the back seat from the weekend trip. (Glad I didn't take that bag inside!) It was only worn for an hour or two. I’m golden, right?

Two dark spots have now formed on my (cute) orange pants. 

Cool. I don’t even know what that looks like… But I do know that my face looked like this:

I made it to the office… I was fine, I would settle in and crank out some work. It was going to be a good day. Not even noon… I still had time to turn this around.

Office door! Sweet relief!

Locked.

I looked around, seeing no one… I didn’t have the energy to walk around and find someone who would be willing to unlock the office door… So I end up back at Starbucks to continue working.

It took 2 more hours to figure out how to get Prezi and these videos to play well together. But I did it!

I realized that I forgot my to-do list at home, so I’m not sure exactly what all I need to complete.

And I have meetings until 8 or so tonight.

But you know… His Mercies are new every morning. 

And I am so beyond-words-thankful for that! 

Joyfully Accepting Grace

Joyfully Accepting Grace... 
If you haven't noticed by now, there's a new title at the top of the page. Not that I think I've outgrown the lesson of giving the Lord control - giving over my throne to Him, per se'... But I have been really focused on learning to accept the grace and mercy the Lord extends every single day. Through that focus, I've been learning a lot about blessings. 

I couldn't even begin to count the number of large, over-the-top blessings that I have received that I do not deserve... I went to a great school, I graduated, I have a job in my field; I have amazing parents and an amazing family, I have two of the best friends a girl could ask for, I just recently started dating a man who is constantly trying to better himself through the Lord... The list could go on. We all have a lot of easy-to-spot blessings. Typically they are things we take for granted... I know that I tend to get caught up in the things I don't have. I'm currently living with my parents, so I get caught up in the fact that I don't have that beautiful apartment all to myself. I get caught up in the fact that I have a 40 minute commute to work. I miss my friends every single day. 

I forget to be grateful I have parents that are not only in a position to allow me to live with them, but they are happy to do it (most days... :p). I sometimes get too caught up in my commute, I forget to be thankful I have a job to commute to (and one that I love!). And I miss my friends - not that it's bad to miss them - but I need to remember to be happy that I have friends to miss... I need to be thankful they have jobs too!

Here recently I "randomly" decided that I was going to write down at least one blessing every single day for a year. Little did I know that an amazing lady already did this - but with three blessings a day. And she never repeated a single one. She even wrote a book about it: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are. And created this simple list of prompts for each day. Things like: 3 Gifts White, 3 Gifts in the Morning, 3 Gifts Said... 

My mom and I are planning on doing this together. We are starting tomorrow - so we have an easy First of The Month Start Date. Here's the interesting thing... I began thinking of several blessings almost a week and a half ago - before I told my mom about my idea and before I found out about the One Thousand Gifts. Since then I have really began to notice the small things that I am truly thankful that I have.

Just this morning I was making coffee and I thought to myself, "How lucky am I that I get to smell this sweet aroma of delicious coffee?" Kind of a simple thing, but imagine for a minute that you didn't have coffee to smell every morning (or maybe it's something besides coffee that helps get you out of bed each morning). 

My whole point of this is to challenge us as Christians to begin looking at the things we do have, rather than the things we don't. The Lord has blessed us beyond our comprehension. But I do believe that if we begin to think about it... We'll maybe be less focused on the troubling times and be more focused on the blessings, the grace, and the mercy we receive every single day. 

Will you go on the One Thousand Gifts journey with us? 

I'm An All or Nothing Girl.

I'm an all or nothing girl. 

This lesson started about a year ago. It was one that I didn't realize would change the way I looked at the rest of my life, the past, present, and future. It was like putting on a pair of glasses; you never realized just how distorted your vision really was until you could see every detail and line. You didn't realize that the darker lines on people's t-shirts weren't a pattern, but rather they were wrinkles. In a lot of ways, it was nicer to see the world with people wearing patterned shirts rather than wrinkly ones. However, it was all a distortion.

I put on the metaphorical glasses about a year ago. I gave into the fact that I was an emotional disaster; I would bottle up a lot of the more intense emotions and then burst at the slightest thing. Looking back, I honestly don't know how people could stand to be around me. But I began the journey... I began to deny the impulse to shove my feelings down and wait until I was alone in the car for a good two hour cry that had been building up for at least a month. I started to tell myself that it was okay to feel angry about something, even if it was little since I knew the little things just added up. 

This was an extremely difficult time as well. I'm an all or nothing girl. I would allow myself to feel the slightest bit of emotion and it felt like it was tenfold. It's so hard to explain what was happening inside me... I knew that the way I was handling this wasn't the best way either. I sought to find the balance. It began to fall into place... I felt a little more even and a whole lot more in control of myself. It felt good. I was no longer always dwelling on the future to ignore the present hurts. I was experiencing the present, truly experiencing the present. I thought I had really settled into this aspect of life. I had my emotions figured out for, quite possibly, the first time. 

Little did I know... I hadn't quite gotten that balancing act down to a fine art just yet. 

I called my mom in a panic. I couldn't decide whether or not to go to the Career Expo at MSU today or not. It was already past the start time and I was not prepared. My mom said five simple words, "This is not like you." And it hit me... In my pursuit to grow and stretch myself, I lost something that was within the very fabric of my being. I'm a planner. I had tried to deny this tendency throughout this lesson. Planning is what caused me to ignore my emotions, planning is what had created this emotional time bomb... Planning is what got me in trouble. And I'm an all or nothing girl. 

So here I am... Struggling yet again to find a balance between the tendency to plan out every second of my day, always looking to see what needs to happen next, and living in the present, enjoying every minute of the time I have now. 

While writing this, I keep thinking that there has to be a distinction between planning and worrying. I mean, the Lord knew that I was going to be a planner. Matthew 6 tells us not to worry... But we need planners in the world... There has to be a way to plan and not worry.

I'm an all or nothing girl.
And I'm trying to find the balance between all or nothing.

Fear

I was sitting here wishing that I had something interesting to write about. 
 I realized this: 

We often times think about our day-to-day lives as something so mundane. We say that nothing exciting happens; we tell everyone that it's the same old, same old. And then we look back, even a week later, and long to go back because it was a better week last week than this one. Or we say that we wish we could go back to freshman year instead of cherishing the time and place that we are currently in. 

I have been doing this lately... I had a conversation with a fellow student in one of my classes and he said he was a freshman... I said to him, "Man. Lucky! I wish I could go back... Enjoy it while it lasts because it will go by so fast." It was something that I had heard going into college and it didn't hit me how very true that statement is until now. The encouragement to enjoy it while it lasts is a good one, I think, definitely nothing wrong with that statement. It was the statement "I wish I could go back..." that really punched me in the face. 

I worked my way up to being a senior. I've reached my last semester. I made it. I've arrived at the moment that every college freshman desires. And here I am desperately wishing I didn't have to look ahead to the scary, vast Big Kid World that is rushing toward me. But honestly, what better place to be?

Because the fact of the matter is... I may be an upperclassman on campus, with experience and knowledge that comes with being here for four years, and with that feel entitled. In the Big Kid World, however, I am less than a freshman - I am a college graduate with little to no experience who has been living "in a bubble" for the past four years. If that doesn't stir up fear, I don't know what will. 

There in lies the root of the problem. Fear. Worry. Stress. Fear of the Unknown. Worry about the Future. Stress about the Present. But with problems come solutions... Knowledge can be gathered, fear can be cast upon the shoulders of my Beloved, and I can worry and stress less about the days to come. And not only that, but I can think about what lessons the Lord has taught me, how much I have grown as a person, the talents that my professors have helped me cultivate, and the opportunities that I have received. All these things to help me realize that I am more equipped for the Big Kid World than my fear leads me to believe. Now let's see if I can conquer that fear for real...



 Freshman Year

 
Senior Year

Self Control

I've really learned a lot about myself since I started this blog several years ago and the biggest thing is that I truly want to be good about writing on a consistent basis, but that I'm pretty much seriously awful when it comes to that. 

I like the idea of writing something profound, truly making an impact on someone's life because of something I said. I think that is something that a lot of people desire, for their words, for their life to mean something to someone, anyone. A little piece of me says that I'm not doing that when I blog... Really, what kind of meaning could my words about my simple life have on someone? Then it hit me... The blog isn't necessarily for someone else -- sure, sure... I share it with the world (heck, it's on the internet and that means pretty much anyone in the world could see it). But in reality, I get so much more for myself when I blog. Selfish? Perhaps just a little bit... On the other hand, being open and vulnerable can perhaps give someone else a little something as well. 

If one were to talk to the great artists and literary figures, I'm fairly certain they would say they worked hard because they enjoyed it. C.S. Lewis probably enjoyed diving into the world of Narnia (how could you not!?); Jackson Pollock might have told you that he enjoyed his crazy, messy paintings. Do they mean something to someone? Yes, yes, they do.

Honestly, I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this... I guess just that we, as Christians, often shout out loud that we're not supposed to enjoy ourselves -- we're not being true Christians if we aren't constantly sitting in prayer or reading our Bibles. We give into the belief that if we're not in a continual state of "sanctification," that we're not doing what the Lord wants us to do. Often times I sit back after enjoying a good cup of coffee, that I probably shouldn't have purchased; or after I just spent the majority of my weekend watching Top Gear, when I should have been doing homework or I could have been spending time with the Lord... I sit back and think, "I probably shouldn't have done that..." But then again...

There's a balance, obviously. To be honest, I'm really sucking it up... I'm overweight, which tells everyone that I give into my temptations to eat pasta, bread, and too many cookies. I enjoy reading, which tends to lean toward far too many sedentary evenings. And I'm a people person (for the most part) and I find my joy in spending time with others - sometimes to the point of putting off homework and my quiet time. So where is the line? I have really been struggling with this.

Recently I started doing two-a-day workouts to kick start a habit of working out every single day and really get healthy. I decided for 28 days I was going to give up all refined sugar and eating out and complete two workouts every weekday. This did not last long due to The Roommate wanting chocolate and Subway within the first week. I struggled with my desire to eat meals with her and maintaining my fast. The People-Person in me won out and I caved. Does this make me a terrible person? I felt guilty about it and gradually realized that my self control was really the issue here... It can be devastating to relationships (not only with other people, but with the Lord) to give in every single time.

I like to think of myself as great at balancing everything in my life. I am organized, I got this life stuff figured out. But...

I'm really struggling with self control. And that's a harsh reality to realize.